The Power of Edge AI in Healthcare

NXP’s award winning AI controller for health insights (AICHI), is a proof of concept that demonstrates the potential of Edge AI in healthcare.

We’re proud to have won the Edge AI Foundation’s BLUEPRINT silver award for our AI-powered healthcare proof of concept. Hot off its debut at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), our AI controller for health insights (AICHI) highlights how we can reduce complexity for our customers and provide a jump start in addressing challenges in the healthcare sector. Leveraging Edge AI for healthcare has exciting potential and big challenges.

Modern Healthcare, Modern Problems

If you’ve been in or around a healthcare facility lately, you know that the health ecosystem is under pressure. There are endless examples of limited resources, overworked staff, long wait times and poor outcomes. These, combined with trends such as ageing and isolated populations, the rise of chronic disease and lack of trained staff require rapid changes in healthcare. Electronics innovation offers promising solutions.

The Role of Edge AI

Edge enabled artificial intelligence will be an important component of these transformational innovations because of its agile decision making and tight security profile. Edge AI offers the ability to process data locally on the device, generating fast decision making and critical action in an emergency. Good examples are detecting anomalies like heart irregularities, blood sugar or oxygen level abnormalities or even a fall. Edge AI also allows sensitive data to be processed on the device itself, reducing the transmission of personal health data across vulnerable networks.

Faster decisions and response, greater privacy, lower costs and personalized processing are attractive benefits. But how do innovators get to the launch pad?

Edge AI requires the right mix of hardware and software, supporting technologies such as security, connectivity and sensing and most importantly the vision to combine them into systems that can reduce complexity and speed development. NXP’s wide portfolio, it’s knowledge and experience in the integration of many ecosystems from advanced medical devices to personal healthcare devices and its leading role in security, leave it in an ideal position to address Edge AI in the healthcare context. AICHI is an example of the system thinking we bring to the table.

Introducing the AICHI Proof of Concept

AICHI is an award-winning  proof of concept that we unveiled at this year’s CES. It is an example of an Edge AI platform that securely collects and analyses multimodal health data in real time. The AI controller uses information from environmental sensors and from noninvasive health devices like blood pressure monitors, ECG patches, glucose patches and/or medical smartwatches. AI models are then used on the sensor data to predict and provide actionable health insights to authorized caregivers outside of the home.

By leveraging Edge AI and fine-tuned large language models (LLMs) for conversational interfaces (optimized for the eIQ Neutron NPU within the i.MX 95 MPU), AICHI securely collects and analyzes multimodal health and sensor data in real time. This enables early anomaly detection, personalized care and proactive interventions—all while maintaining the highest standards of security and efficiency. Our proof of concept is an example of how both patients and healthcare providers can benefit from real-time, actionable insights.

Here is a video  from CES that highlights AICHI.